2. Contact Info

3. Dealer Selection

Consider this: Honda has added a year to the Civic’s lifecycle. When the new ’12 model finally arrives late next year, it had better be another segment-buster and not a slightly smaller Accord. Toyota continues to sell boatloads of Corollas, but only to the quickly fading brand faithful who don’t care that the car is a half-hearted attempt to leech off the Camry/Prius reputation.

The Kia Forte looks nice and modern enough. It doesn’t do much for the driving experience, and is best left to buyers who want $28,000 worth of equipment for less than $20,000. The Nissan Sentra? Have you seen one lately? What does it look like, again?

You already know the 2011 Volkswagen Jetta. Americans will buy anything that costs less than $20,000, even a decontented five-cylinder compact, right?

By process of elimination, the 2011 Chevrolet Cruze, 2012 Ford Focus and a wild card, the new Hyundai Elantra, seem to have the goods to lead the compact segment in the United States. This is no small deal. Automakers predict the c-segment will overcome the c/d-segment as the most popular size class in the U.S.

I think that’s overstated, though with oil prices steady at $80 a barrel despite a slow, questionable economic recovery and rising sticker prices for cars and trucks, there is something to that prediction. GM says midsize cars made up 16.1 percent of the market in the first half of 2010, and compacts were right behind, at 15.2 percent (compact crossovers: 11.5 percent, pickup trucks: 10.8 percent).

First drives of the new Focus and Elantra are several months away. This is the second “first” drive of the Cruze. Like the new Jetta, it’s larger than the car (Cobalt) it replaces and could qualify with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) as an intermediate, based on interior volume.

So with the ’11 Jetta drive under my belt, it seems a second look to Frank Markus’ insightful first drive of the Chevy Cruze is in order. Chevrolet invited journalists to Washington, D.C., appropriately, where we drove the car from Dupont Circle out into Virginia’s nearby Horsey Country.

In ride and refinement, the new Cruze is far superior to the similarly sized new Jetta. It’s much quieter, with minimal vibration from the 138-horsepower turbocharged 1.4-liter four, compared with the VeeDub’s 170-horsepower, 2.5-liter I-5. Its 0-60 mph time might take a couple of seconds longer than the Jetta’s, but Cruze hits its 148 pound-feet peak at 1,850 rpm, and there’s just the slightest lag at tip-in before the boost comes on. The five-cylinder Jetta’s (the volume engine) 177 pound-feet comes on like an on-off switch, and with a noisy whine that will turn off even the most jaded compact buyers.

The striking thing about the Cruze’s tiny turbo engine (just 83.2 cubic inches, by the old American measurement) is that it feels like a much larger engine. Admittedly, I didn’t pay a lot of attention to the short first part of the drive, a rush-hour run from Dulles airport to Dupont Circle. The fact that it was comfortably unmemorable is a good thing.

Virginia’s Horse Country, with its rolling two-lanes, is far less twisty than the section of Highway One north of San Francisco where I got to drive the Jetta. I can say the Cruze’s rack-mounted electric power-assisted steering has better on-center feel and good, even weight than the Jetta’s steering, which for the North American market remains hydraulic-assist, for cost reasons.

I drove rush hour in a top-trim LTZ model (base price, $22,695) with the $695 RS appearance package (unique front and rear fascias, rocker moldings, front foglamps and rear spoiler). For the country drive in Virginia the next day, my co-driver and I grabbed the “volume” model, the $18,895-base Cruze LT, with standard six-speed automatic and 16-inch wheels. In moderate cornering, it was nicely planted with predictable body roll.

The back seat has plenty of legroom and good headroom, and it’s sufficiently quiet, though with some “boom” over grainy pavement. I could hear the driver and front-seat passenger, with a little struggle. Overall, the Cruze feels well insulated without feeling too isolated.

It’s exceptionally well damped, with no secondary bounce after a hill or bump. And it’s exceptionally quiet and refined. The Cruze has its share of hard plastic on the upper dash and doors, but it’s a better quality and better grained than the Jetta’s plastic. The stylish two-tone woven cloth trim on the dash and doors looks rich, and makes it a much more interesting place to be than the Jetta. Or the Toyota Corolla, one of two competitors Chevy offered up for comparison in Virginia.

The other was a Honda Civic sedan. It’s a bit more, well, fun than the Cruze. It’s also much noisier than the Chevy, no doubt because it has less sound damping and thus is several hundred pounds lighter. The Cruze weighs about 3,100 (for the 40-mpg highway ECO model) to about 3,400 pounds, says chief engineer Chuck Russell. It has near-midsize weight to match its near-midsize size.

It must be noted that VW managed to reduce its new Jetta’s mass by an average of 110 pounds compared with the old model, depending on equipment. VW attributes much of this to greater use of high-strength steel.

The Chevy Cruze‘s weight probably doesn’t matter much, as long as it offers decent acceleration and good fuel mileage. We’ll have to wait for a third drive to find out. No ECO models were available for this drive, and Chevy isn’t providing estimates for what it thinks the EPA will score non-ECO models on the highway, though one executive admitted it will fall by more than 1 mpg simply by adding the six-speed automatic.

For now, the six-speed manual will be available only on the $16,995 base model, which comes with a 1.8-liter naturally aspirated four, and on the ECO, which is available with either transmission. The ECO’s automatic will have the same ratios as non-ECO models, while the ECO’s manual gets some very tall gears: 4.273:1 first, 2.158:1 second, 1.302:1 third, 0.959:1 fourth, 0.744:1 fifth and 0.614:1 sixth.

Chevy says the manual ECO will do 0-60 mph in 9.1 seconds, better than a comparable Civic’s 9.8 seconds and a comparable Corolla’s 10.0 seconds (manufacturer’s estimates, not ours).

The company says the Cruze is about 80-percent common with the global model. Its so-called z-link rear suspension, a trailing twist-beam with a Watt’s link, comes from the new Opel Astra, which also is on GM’s Delta compact architecture. Cruzes outside North America don’t have the z-link. It was supposed to be on the 2012 Buick version only, to differentiate it from the Chevy.

Russell says the Buick version will be to the Chevy Cruze what the Buick Enclave is to the Chevy Traverse, but I’m dubious. Let’s hope GM doesn’t revert to badge engineering again.

The Cruze is such a good compact, anyway, with a semi-premium look and feel, that I’d rather see Buick scrub a Delta compact and let the slightly larger Regal, with its tight back seat, continue to be the “entry” Buick.

If GM hadn’t set forth on its long, slow decline beginning in the Roger Smith years, the Cruze exemplifies what Chevrolet would have been if GM had invested its Saturn money in its most popular division, instead. Chevy has been losing the struggle with the small car since the 1960 Corvair. Now, in GM’s brave, new, government-reorganized world, a car that began development back when GM was merely losing money and not out of it, is poised to lead its renaissance. If Chevy can deliver the Cruze to customers the way it delivered the car to us, it will finally have won the struggle.

Horsepower

2011 Chevrolet Cruze News and Reviews

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